


6:28 AM

by Bast (Bastet_Seith)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 14:58:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2472398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bastet_Seith/pseuds/Bast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <a href="http://hostingkartinok.com/show-image.php?id=45aeaaeb477d3d78deeebf4634e67033"></a>
  <br/>
  <img/>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	6:28 AM

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [6:28 AM](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2472464) by [zabavnaya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zabavnaya/pseuds/zabavnaya). 



> Bucky/Steve, few months after CA:TWS, the day after Steves’ birthday. Warning! deathfic.

Steve wakes up at dawn as at the snap, the only alarm signal that rings is in his head. Bucky lies by his side, clenching a blanket between his knees, his hands pushed underneath the pillow with his head pressing into it; he is smiling so Steve smiles, too. He leans in, elbows supporting him on the mattress, and starts kissing until that smile on Bucky’s face grows wider, softer, pleased. He returns the kiss with his eyes still closed as if he has never been woken up; huffing suddenly, he pulls Steve close, nips his earlobe with lips and bites on it.

“You, heartless beast?” his eyes are half-closed, sleepy; Bucky rubs them with his right wrist looking like a big cat or a big kid. “Who even does that, Steve? It’s still early…” he yawns throwing his head back and Steve immediately presses himself to the neck and pinches the skin, so lightly there would hardly be any marks left.

“Tell me that you object,” Bucky just laughs on that.

“Your Birthday is already over. Do you really think you can wake me up in such an ungodly hour?” he makes an attempt to get up but there comes the phone ring; Steve grabs a cell from a bedside table and answers the call without even looking at the name. 

“Hello?” he snaps.  
We need you – he hears, exhaling helplessly in between Bucky’s shoulder blades. We need you now.

We need you both – the more people, the better. A group of engineers that worked on another nameless project for HYDRA, escaped from the S.H.I.E.L.D. The information is excessively valuable, the minds are excessively valuable, they cannot wander around the world with this knowledge. On second thought, they do not manage to run a long way. They were noticed on the outskirts of New York. There is a big house with only a few abandoned construction sites around. The house has a black roof and walls covered in scuffed graffiti. 

If it was not for the time, Steve thinks, that would look much like a horror movie.

“Twenty six,” Bucky announces right there, clapping on the legs checking for the weapon. “They might at least not be crazy and still sleep at such an hour”.

Steve hopes it will all go smooth and fast because the fewer people suffer at his hands the better. Bucky, as he knows, hopes for the same so they could return to bed sooner. “We’re not finished, Steve. So if you dared to wake me up get ready for a repay.”

“Group One, you follow me, scan the area, the faster the better,” Steve says brief, brisk. There are building lots and warehouses and a pile of boxes around, - anything can be there. “Group Two goes for the house, carefully though. If it’s a trap, no one knows what weapon they have there.”

No one knows whether those people are there at all.

Bucky narrows his eyes and does not take the hand away from his shoulder, examining Group One for a while – they are good soldiers, high-class weapon in hands, professional shooters, nothing to catch at. With them Steve has not had to worry what’s behind his back times before now.

“Am I with Two?” it has been the second time already that Bucky reconfirms. He knows that separating is reasonable, but Steve knows why Bucky is against the idea; but he does not argue, he just outlines his discontent. He slides his hand up the shoulder to his neck, reaches the nape where the skin is exposed and bare free of uniform. “No respect for National holidays, bastards. Capitan America needs at least a week to celebrate his birthday, and they just run…”

Guys laugh trying to keep it down; Steve smiles with the corner of his mouth, throws his head back a little so that the touch becomes stronger, closer, harder. Bucky turns his head towards him and winks, the smile vanishes from his face a moment later, and Steve nods.

“Let’s go.”

Everything happens within only a few minutes. Piled up boxes with no tags are absolutely empty as well as the closest suspended construction. Steve moves to the next as he decided that it is the last one, no more playing safe. If they were hiding than they would be doing that inside the house, so they need to go there as fast as possible. The soldiers disperse making it easier for everyone, Steve snaps around – he might be just imagining things, but it could be that the shadow that flashed between blank walls was real. He turns that way and speeds forward. Step, another, the third one. A noise comes from behind; Steve falls on the floor in a knee-jerk reaction. Explosive wave does not reach them as much – the walls are crumbling, falling, the scraps the bursting around and about, some timber catches flame, there is dirt and smoke and fire. Steve watches all that with his head turned – two seconds – and then he scoots off, runs, distance means nothing for him but it all seems to be happening so slowly. The smoke is thick before his eyes, wreathing into the air heavily with dust and burnt, someone shouts behind his shoulder but Steve does not hear, he just keeps running.

The house is in ruins. Seems like it has always been empty here, a one-decker of doll-type that has never been filled with toy furniture. Steve stumbles over something he does not recognize. He is about to rush further when he freezes as if having run into the invisible wall. Then he looks back. 

He does not want to look back.

There is the arm on the floor, darkened, broken but recognizable nevertheless. Steel. Steve takes a deep breath; the nose is instantly stuffed with something. He sneezes trying to tear his eye off the arm, ripped off, lying on the floor that is scattered with small stones, almost unnoticeable in all this mess; Steve thinks that he is calm. He is very, very calm, why not? – That is what he thinks. What could possibly happen? The explosion is rot, the flame is rot, breathing is hard, so what? They wore armor vests, he had his uniform on, and it is not their first time, in the end…

Bodies lie around. All that is left of them.

Remains, lumps, odd fragments, pieces of meat all around the dirty floor that used to be good, wonderful people some time ago; bricks are stained in blood, no one could identify anybody here without a proper investigation, though with it that still would be impossible. Steve does not think about the investigation, he shrugs this thought off. Breathing does get hard and he presses his palm to the mouth and goes back, slowly, calmly, really calmly, bends down where the entrance once was, lifts something that once was the arm and strides over a destroyed doorstep.

Time of death, Steve thinks for some reason and does not raise a look at Group One. How did doctors announce that? Time of death at six twenty eight AM, July the fifth.

He stays silent.

The heated metal cools down in his hands.

 

Steve is still calm when he is writing a report, cadaverous countenance, wall-eyed, dry officialese: Steve is calm when he is back home in the empty flat warmed up by the soft sunlight. Bucky’s tee-shirt lies left on the floor by the bathroom door, a note, “I ate your cake” still stuck to the fridge since yesterday, a keychain with a shield from Smithsonian Museum forgotten on the windowsill. Steve is calm, when he lowers down on the bedroom floor looking at the break-open wardrobe and clothes left kicking-about.

Six twenty eight AM, he repeats to himself, as if the precise time can help it somehow, can turn the real death into a useless plain fact which can be waved off, which you can go past, imagine that nothing happens; six twenty eight AM. 

Steve turns off the phone and does not look at the time; the arm – with only two lifeless fingers left – lies by and Steve cannot lower his gaze.

Steve cannot breathe.

He does not record when Sam appears nearby, it’s probably getting dark outside. He opens the door with his own key, drops on his knees and puts a hand on his shoulder. Steve flinches and shrugs it off; Sam puts an open bottle of whiskey on the floor and it looks like a crappy déjà vu, a really bad dream, ravings of a madman. Steve chokes on the words.

“I cannot get drunk.”

“Psychological effect,” Sam watches him with unusual gravity, scanning, examining, checking, and Steve gives a damn on what he can find there. “It can help. For about thirty seconds.”

Look at you, - Steve hears a scoffing familiar voice in his head, - kids teach old men how to drink. Let some psycho inject some serum into you, Wilson, and then we’ll see how you will suffer at the parties of other guys.

Bucky would laugh.

Steve reaches out for the bottle, makes three big gulps, the fourth, too, and he does not feel any taste or smell; he feels nothing.

Nothing – he hands whiskey to Sam, turns away, staring at the rumpled unmade bed, tousled sheets, and a blanket hanging down to the floor, pillows thrown about: Steve bites his lip, thinking lazily whether this is what they call hysteria. Sam is saying something behind his shoulder, Steve swears and lands a fist into the floor, and once again.

And again.

On July the eleventh Steve puts on the real uniform for the first time after these few years, the same one as the two thirds of those who are present at the funerals wear, flag at half-mast look like a wipe. Natasha stops one step behind, Tony stands with arms across, on the right of a simple coffin, looks over the heads of others. Steve sticks his gaze to a wooden lid, squares the shoulders even more, straightening his back, lifts a hand and plant tips of the fingers to the temple, rendering a salute in deadly silence. Lord, oh, lord, this so stupid, so absurd. Steve lowers the hand just as slowly, he has to stand here for another half an hour.

The coffin is a symbol.

It is empty.

In a lavatory Steve freezes in front of a mirror grasping on his reflection and fails to understand who he is looking at – eyes darkened, hollow cheeks, with lips shut tight, a mask sculpted by a perverted artist; wiping swiftly Steve hits the glass. Shatters fall to the floor, Steve stares down – his blood runs down the knuckles, fine glass sand contaminates the wound.

No one comes to Steve that day.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the translation of a stinging painful fiction written by [zabavnaya](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zabavnaya/works).  
> She wrote it in Russian but desperately wanted to burn more souls so I translated it into English for her, and she dropped the bomb into her [tumblr](http://alex-zabavnaya.tumblr.com/post/97468412718/6-28-am).  
> Nothing is good about me now.
> 
> P.S.: Summary manip by [shkav](http://shkav.tumblr.com/)


End file.
